Psychological nativism 3719355 219773490 2008-06-16T20:37:22Z Vasiľ 7200973 +[[sk:Nativizmus]] {{Citations missing|date=March 2008}} :''For nativism as a political force, see [[Nativism]]''. In the field of [[psychology]], '''nativism''' is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard wired into the [[brain]] at [[Childbirth|birth]]. This is in contrast to [[Empiricism]], the 'blank slate' or [[tabula rasa]] view which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs. Some nativists believe that specific beliefs or preferences are ''hard wired.'' For example, one might argue that some moral intuitions are innate or that color preferences are innate. A less strong argument is that nature supplies the human mind with specialized learning devices. This latter view differs from empiricism only to the extent that the algorithms that translate experience into information may be more complex and specialized in nativist theories than in empiricist theories. However, it is important to note that empiricists largely remain open to the nature of learning algorithms and are by no means restricted to the historical associationist mechanisms of [[behaviorism]]. ==In Philosophy== Nativism has a history in philosophy, particularly as a reaction to the straightforwardly empiricist views of [[John Locke]] and [[David Hume]]. Hume had given persuasive logical arguments that people cannot infer causality from perceptual input. The most one could hope to infer is that two events happen in succession or simultaneously. One response to this argument was to posit that concepts such as causality that are not supplied by experience must exist prior to any experience and hence are innate. Philosopher [[Immanuel Kant]] reasoned in his ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'' that the human [[mind]] knows objects in innate, [[A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)|a priori]] ways. Kant claimed that humans, from birth, must experience all objects as being successive ([[time]]) and juxtaposed ([[space]]). His list of inborn [[Category (Kant)|Categories]] are [[Predicate (grammar)|predicates]] that the mind can attribute to any object in general. [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]] agreed with Kant, but reduced the number of innate Categories to one, namely, [[causality]], which presupposes the others. ==Modularity== Nativism is most associated with the work of [[Jerry Fodor]], [[Noam Chomsky]], and [[Steven Pinker]], who argue that we are born with certain [[cognitivism|cognitive]] [[modularity|modules]] (specialised genetically inherited psychological abilities) that allow us to learn and acquire certain skills (such as [[language]]). For example, children demonstrate a facility with acquiring spoken language but require intense training to learn to read and write. In ''[[The Blank Slate]]'', Pinker cites this as evidence that humans have an inborn facility with [[Language acquisition|speech acquisition]] (but not with [[literacy]] acquisition). A number of other theorists have disagreed with these claims. Instead, they have outlined alternative theories of how modularization might emerge over the course of development, as a result of a system gradually refining and fine-tuning its responses to environmental stimuli (see ''Beyond Modularity''<ref>{{cite book|last=Karmiloff-Smith|first=Annette|title= Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science|publisher=MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|year=1996|isbn= 0262611147}}</ref> by [[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]] and [[Interactive Specialization]]). ==Criticism== Nativism is sometimes perceived as being too vague to be falsifiable, as there is no fixed definition of when an ability is called innate. Furthermore, it is unclear exactly ''how'' the supposedly innate information might actually be coded for in the genes (a point that [[Jeffrey Elman]] and colleagues make in [[Rethinking Innateness]]). Some researchers argue that the premises of nativism were motivated by outdated considerations and need reconsidering. Nativism was partially motivated by the perception that statistical inferences made from experience were insufficient to account for the complex minds humans have. In part, it was a reaction to the failure of [[behaviorism]] to account for why some associations were easier to learn than others. With the advent of more complicated mathematics such as [[complexity theory]] or [[game theory]], however, scientists are now able to see that extremely complicated systems can evolve from agents with few pre-programmed rules. For example, several nativist arguments were inspired by the success of Chomsky in advocating the existence of an innate language-learning module called a [[language acquisition device]]. Chomsky's arguments were based partially on the assertion that children could not learn complicated grammar based on the input they typically receive. It is now known that many of the claims in Chomsky's [[poverty of the stimulus]] argument are empirically false and that complicated grammars can indeed be developed. Similar arguments extend to other modules. ==See also== *[[Domain specificity]] *[[Evolutionary psychology]] *[[Nature versus nurture]] *[[Universal grammar]] [[Category:Interdisciplinary fields|Psychological nativism]] [[Category:Psychological theories]] [[de:Nativismus (Psychologie)]] [[he:נייטיביזם (פסיכולוגיה)]] [[id:Nativisme]] [[nl:Aangeboren kennis]] [[pl:Natywizm]] [[sk:Nativizmus]] [[uk:Нативізм]]